The controlled production in yeast of an enormous variety of useful proteins or polypeptides can be achieved using recombinant DNA technology. Yeast cells can be transformed with yeast expression vectors, which contain homologous or heterologous nucleic acid molecules encoding polypeptides (coding sequences). The yeast cells can then produce large quantities of the useful proteins or polypeptides in yeast cell culture.
Expression of the nucleic acid molecule encoding a polypeptide by the yeast expression vector is initiated at a region known as the promoter, which is recognized by and bound by RNA polymerase. The RNA polymerase travels along the DNA, transcribing the information contained in the coding strand from its 5′ to 3′ end into messenger RNA, which is in turn translated into a polypeptide having the amino acid sequence for which the DNA codes. The present invention provides novel yeast promoters useful for, inter alia, controlling the expression of homologous and heterologous nucleic acid sequences encoding proteins and polypeptides in yeast cells.